Working the Room

Why is it that some people seem to “work a room” effortlessly while others shudder at the thought of starting conversations with strangers?  Personality type might make it easier for the extraverts, but it’s common for introverts to walk away from a conference with more business cards than they know what to do with.

The ability to work a room goes beyond personality because anyone can learn how it’s done.  This is not a primer on how to work a room, but there are a few basics.

First, those who start working the room by talking about themselves will last as long as it takes their victims to find an exit-from-the-conversation strategy.  If you have just returned from an Everest expedition, maybe you will keep your audience rapt for a while.  But, regardless of your story, ramble on about yourself long enough and you will eventually find yourself alone in the conversation.

Successful room workers know that we all like to talk about ourselves, so they will give you the opportunity to do so.  But, again, the vast majority of us grow tired of telling our stories, or at least we realize there is a limit.

This is the point at which the ability of those who know how to work a room really comes through.  Every conversation is a multi-point exchange.  Ideally, there is a point for each person in the conversation.  The great room-workers will add their relevant input to the conversation and encourage others to do the same.  A conversation is better when more people make relevant contributions.

Good internet marketing means knowing how to “work the room”.  Other marketing media are generally single-point forms of communication – you send your message to your customers.  Like a room, the internet allows multi-point communications between you and your customers – and amongst your customers.

To be a successful participant in the conversation, or successful internet marketer, you need to encourage your customers to speak.  You must listen to what they say; find out what they seek.  Then you need to respond with the relevant information they need to make the right decisions about your company.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Balance Your Web Marketing Strategy

We’ll be the first to admit that what follows is not a scientific test.  However, we believe all SME owners and managers should develop their internet marketing strategy with the results in mind.

We googled a few internet marketing terms just to see what we would see.  Below are four of the six terms we searched and the number of results for each term:

Web marketing – 103,000,000

Internet marketing – 103,000,000

Web marketing search – 84,600,000

Internet marketing search – 54,000,000

When we searched the first term, “web marketing”, we were struck by the number of references to “search engine optimization/rankings/marketing” in the results.  

Any surfer would get the impression that web/internet marketing revolves around getting higher search engine rankings.

We added the word “search” to our original terms to get an idea of the realtionship between the two.  It's quite strong.

It should be.  If your site is not found when your customers search for businesses like yours, you are as good as invisible on the internet.

However, as vitally important as high search ranking are to your internet marketing strategy, no strategy can stand on search results alone.

We searched two other terms:

Web marketing conversion – 4,030,000

Internet marketing conversion – 3,720,000

Again, this is by no means a scientific test, but the overall trend it exposes is undeniable.  While at least 50% of internet/web marketing results included some reference to “search”, a maximum of 4% included a reference to “conversion”.  Even after randomly clicking on 25 to 30 of the results, references to conversion were found on the home pages of only two internet marketing web sites (all of the sites we visited had some reference to search engine optimization/marketing/seo, etc., on their home pages)

You can get all the traffic you want to your web site, but if you don’t convert them, it’s like being invisible again.  In fact, it may be worse.  At least if you’re “invisible”, you can take steps to become “visible”.  But, if you make the effort to get a customer to your site and then fail to convert them, there's a good chance they will not return - effort (and money) wasted.

The moral of the story: beware of an unbalanced emphasis on search engine results when choosing your internet marketing partner. 

By Stephen Da Cambra

Web Design Dissonance

There’s a problem with using web design templates, or web designers whose main goal is to make their next site slicker than the last.  These are usually the least expensive web design alternatives and they are increasingly popular in an uncertain economy.  However, business owners who choose this route should be aware of its true costs.

Web design is about far more than good looks.  A web site has a practical purpose and your web design must do everything it can to serve that purpose.  If yours is a business web site, its purpose is probably to make a sale, get market information or create a business lead.

When your site manages to achieve its purpose, it has made a conversion.  So, ultimately, the purpose of your site is to convert your web visitors.

Remember, your site design needs to serve the purpose of your web site.  When it doesn’t, you have design dissonance.

Design dissonance means the design of your site, both graphically and structurally, works against the goals, or purpose, of the site.

Web design dissonance can happen in many ways.  The graphic design of the site does not fit the image or brand of the company, which often happens with templates.  The site design does not make it easy for the visitor to convert, which often happens with a slick over-design that is just trying to look good.  Design dissonance also happens when the site design is not planned, from the beginning, around achieving the goals of the site, which is another symptom of designers who only concentrate on a slick look. 

When you choose the "inexpensive" web design route – templates and $500 designers - make sure you understand the full cost of doing so.

By Stephen Da Cambra

A Billboard on the Moon

The most expensive billboard advertising locations are on the most travelled routes.  It’s the perfect example of a linear equation; higher traffic = more impressions = higher cost.

But, even the busiest routes give your billboard exposure only to people who travel those routes.  If you want to reach everyone in your market, you need lots of billboards in lots of different places.  It’s a daunting task.

Unless you found a place where a single billboard would be visible to everyone.  There's no such place on earth - but there's one that is relatively close.

The moon is the perfect billboard location because it is regularly seen by everyone in the world.  One billboard, 6.5 billion potential impressions - billboard nirvana.

So, why are there no billboards on the moon?  There’s the logistics of location, distance, outer space, etc., but those are merely hurdles.  The real problem with a billboard on the moon is viewer effort.  To receive your message, people would need to make an effort to view it. 

For example, to see regular-sized billboard on the moon, viewers would need a personal Hubble.  Even if you managed a billboard large enough for the naked eye, people would still need to look skyward – a simple effort that 99.9% of your audience would not make.

The greatest billboard in the history of the world, in the only location visible to everyone, would remain largely unseen.

Coming back down to earth, or at least moving into cyberspace, the same principle is true for web sites.  It is possible for everyone with an internet connection to see your site.

Unless they have to make an effort.

The internet requires a lot of viewer effort.  Instead of passively receiving information from a billboard as they travel, internet consumers have to actively search for information.

Statistics show that, after making the effort to do an internet search, consumers are in no mood for additional effort.  Almost half will choose from the first page of web search results.  Fewer than 10% will go beyond the third page. 

In other words, the effort that your potential customers are willing to make to find your web site amounts to a mouse click, maybe two. 

Even if you have the greatest web site ever, if it does not show up at the top of internet search engine results, it will go largely unseen.

Like a billboard on the moon. 

By Stephen Da Cambra

The End of the Debate?

Profitable companies need leads (traffic) and sales (conversions).  Debates rage in corners of the internet about which is more important, web site traffic or conversions. 

Clearly, both traffic and conversions are necessary for a site to achieve its highest measure of success.  Without one, the other is of no consequence. On that basis, there is no debate.  Web traffic and your site’s ability to convert that traffic are equally important. 

However, when you begin to develop an internet marketing plan, particularly your site design, you will focus on one, traffic or conversions, before the other. 

But which one? 

Choosing to optimize your site to attract traffic will probably tempt you to stoke your web copy with keywords, create and crosslink to lots of pages and generally have a site that is candy for the Google bots.

But, when surfers visit, will your search-optimized site be able to convert them into customers? 

To answer that question, I searched Google for “search engine optimization”.  I figured, to get a natural page one rank for such a popular search term, a web site or landing page would need to be built for search engine rankings first, then conversions.    

The search results proved me right.  More right than I expected.  The results on the first page include an article-listing site, a site with no apparent calls to action, a site with more calls to action than I have ever seen on a single web page and one site that featured a large SUBMIT NOW call-to-action button (fortunately I keep my cursor on the “Back” link and I escaped before I fell into their clutches.)

One common characteristic among the results was uninviting blocks of text.  Sheer keyword-laced content is a basic SEO technique and, to rank for such a high demand term, these sites had to resort to packing it into their landing and home pages.

After a quick scan, I don’t think I would use any of the listed services to develop a site that is well balanced for traffic and conversions.

If your site isn’t built to convert traffic, how else will you convert them?  While your web site should do everything possible to attract the search engines, building it primarily to convert traffic will usually give you the best return.  To allow it to do so, focus your traffic-building efforts outside the site, or within the site as part of your conversion architecture.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Is Google Adwords Becoming Too Competitive

I was at a search engine optimization seminar the other day and when the question and answer period arrived there were many small businesses complaining about the competitiveness of Google Adwords. They claimed that it is becoming too competitive for small bussinesses to afford the cost of the clicks each month, and wanted to know if Google Adwords is still viable.

Yes the cost of each click is going up as many advertisers both big and small start to focus their budgets on the Internet. In our opinion Google Adwords is still viable even though the cost has gone up because it is still a fast and easy way to drive traffic to your business.

The challenges with this style of marketing is it's fast and furious.

If you want to be successful in this market it is critical that you focus on three things.

1. You have a well thought out strategy with adwords based on keywords, ad, and budget.
2. You have a website that is very effective and proven to convert traffic into leads/customers.
3. You have a way to track and measure these results to adjust the campaign until you are able to get it to work.

Without any of these three elements you are setting yourself up for failure.

With our clients we would never think of running a campaign without all three variables in place and this is why for them Google Adwords has proven to provide a great return on their investment.

2008 - The Year of Internet Marketing

It looks like Internet Marketers and Advertising Guru's will finally be right this year as they claim that 2008 will be the year of internet marketing. Many businesses have set aside budgets towards search engine optimization and other online marketing campaigns.

The key to success in 2008 is to begin to integrate your marketing together as it comes funneled through your website. The companies that are able to leverage all sources of marketing will be the one's that grow in 2008.